Mr. Plinkett was okay. But this was just two arrogant guys in their 40s acting like they speak for all Trekkies and talking shit about DSC. I can get that here.
Rich (who unapologetically despised DSC from day one) was at least consistent in his criticism, while Mike sorta did a 180 there. His previous comments on Discovery were rather favorable. I guess he may have been influenced by the online community that gave him a lot of shit for it. He also (to some extent) backtracked on his TFA praise after the fan backlash. Fans were also mad at him for not trashing The Last Jedi, so he did damage control by making an unfavorable Plinkett video.
i usually love these videos, even if i don't totally agree with them. but they were clearly alluding to midnight's edge, which is dubious at best. also, the cancel CBS all access thing is such a tired refrain.
"Made by people that hate [insert franchise]" is such a tired tired complaint. I've heard this when CASINO ROYALE came out by a lot of Bond fans who thought the film was "not real James Bond" because it didn't follow every formulaic Bond trope like having a scene with Moneypenny or something. I like RLM, but they can be a bit insufferable at times with their closed mindedness.
I thought it was pretty terrible. If you want to shit on Discovery, at least do your homework. They got several things factually wrong about the episodes, and didn't seem like they could be arsed to show up prepared for the filming at all.
Peer Pressure makes it even worse. It's the high school mentality. "I'm going to say this just so I sound cool!" If someone's going to say something (or post something for that matter), they should believe what they say. Otherwise, like Holden Caulfield would say, they're phonies. And who really wants to listen to a phony? Unless they don't care as long as the phony says whatever they want to hear.
They generally put some thought into their reviews. I really found it disappointing as longtime viewer. I’ve disagreed with them multiple times on certain reviews, but they didn’t even try. It’s like they didn’t really watch them, they just got drunk skimmed through them and immediately started filming. This basically boiled down to “it’s not my preconceived notion of Star Trek, therefore it sucks.” It was basically identical to their Plinkett Last Jedi review was just garbage. I stopped watching when they got to Calypso and just dismissed the best written story Trek has done in years because it had nothing to do with Discovery other than the setting. The whole thing feels like they’re hat trying to please the angry manchildren fan base which has a huge overlap with their fan base based on the few times I tried to engage on their forum or subreddit. They pretty much take everything they say as gospel, even the sarcasm and blatant lies.
They admitted they only watched 3 because they did not know till just before filming their review, that there even was a fourth one. If you want people to value your opinion on a topic, seems like you'd at least KNOW the topic.
I’ve tried engaging with their fan base. They basically just regurgitate what RLM say. Even reusing certain phrases like “schlock” to describe something they don’t like because it’s what Mike Stoklasa says a lot.
I've noticed that as well, and I don't like that. In quite a lot of the last few reviews, say "Black Panther" or "Star Wars", they have repeatedly allured to "forced political messages" when including minority or female roles in movies. Which is kind of pretentious coming from a show featuring only white guys. And also clashes with the simple reality: Women, minorities in the US and people from the rest of the world nowadays simply have a shit-ton of money to spend compared to the past. And Hollywood likes money. So they are going to appeal to those people as well. That's it. No secret agenda. Here I have to kindly disagree though. I think their Discovery-review were not well researched, but very fair overall. They just don't care this much for DIS. Which is not that surprising, a running theme of them through the last years has been the overabundance of badly made genre crap to cash in on popular IPs. Even MARVEL-movies, which they generally like, get that criticism, and DIS comes much better off than what they say about DC, Star Wars or a wole lot of other "nerd" IPs. As for their "Last Jedi"-review, while I didn't agree with them on everything, I think they made some very good points about the movies weird tonal shifts. Which really helped me to understand why I didn't like this movie (even though I thought it was better than all the other Disney Star Wars movies): The simply fact that in the end, everybody was dying, decimated, only the fewest lucky survivors who had all their friends die around them - and they were cracking JOKES all the time(!) and had calm discussions in the background (instead of being scared and shell-shocked to their bones) - was probably the thing that disturbed me so much. Thing is: Redlettermedia became famous by crapping on pop-culture (Star Wars) and doing horrible rape-jokes during that. They turned down the rape-jokes. But they're still doing the thing they're famous for: Crapping on everything popular. But they do so in a very entertaining and insightfull manner, that's why I keep watching them. You just have to expect that - if they're reviewing something well-known that you like - they gonna' crap on it. And overall - wile they couldn't have made clearer they don't really care about DIS - I think the Trek shorts got away much better than most stuff on RLM.
Actually part of RLM's appeal was at one time that they didn't just reflexively crap on things. The Plinkett prequel reviews that made their name contained really detailed, supportable and interesting criticism, for instance. It wasn't just a couple of dudes sitting around bemoaning The New Thing. I'm finding that increasingly rare in RLM videos. which is too bad.
Yeah, they're usually good on Star Trek (especially Mike) - the recent TMP review was lovely. But this seems pretty lazy and poorly thought out. Despite them seemingly quite liking some of the ideas and character beats in the Short Treks, the punchline is "we're done with Discovery" based on the trailer for season two. Let's just say I'll be very surprised if they don't end up watching and reviewing it...
Well, their analysis-videos are usually way more condensed and researched than their discussion videos. If they're sitting down to talk about what they saw last, they usually just talk right off the top of their head. Of course that's not going to be as detailed or objective as if they put a special review together. It's a more direct way to get their honest opinions about stuff. And they're still usually pretty good observers. Even here.
Does anyone think they'll actually do as they threaten to at the end of the video and not review any more Discovery?
The idea that Mike isn't being genuine and is simply trying to appease RLM fans is pretty silly. He's obviously someone who feels passionately about Star Trek, and people's opinions aren't stagnate. He's praised Trek before (TMP, Beyond), and he's trashed Star Trek before (TNG Movies, STiD). TrekBBS: "I like RLM except when they're making fun of my precious STD and TLJ" People around here are just uncomfortable that they brought up a lot of valid criticisms.